If I believed in jinxes, I'd say I jinxed myself with that "Regurgitated Grapes" blog yesterday.

Day 87 & my 100th post:

Have you ever made a joke, and then reality happened and you wished you could take it back. Yeah, that's how I felt about the "Regurgitated Grapes" post around 2 am when I woke up to the sound of Kora puking.  And FYI, apparently she didn't regurgitate all of those grapes, some made it to her stomach, and then decided to vacate the premises.

Sick baby girl.

It was so strange, because she had zero other symptoms. No fussiness, no lethargy, no fever.  And this morning she was completely her perky self, before and after puking multiple times. So weird.  I kept her quiet and in the air conditioned bedroom until a little before lunch. I decided to go ahead and take the kids to the school room. It wasn't until then, that she started acting clingy and lethargic. Hate to see her sick.  She couldn't even keep water down, but she kept beaming a smile at her Daddy.

In the midst of our "sick morning", I was Voxing my sister and she reminded me of a package she sent a while back (I explain better in one of the picture captions).  We had so much fun playing with all the materials she sent. And I wanted to use this as an opportunity to brag on her a little bit.  She is super mom. Like, seriously on top of things and so willing to research and learn new things.  She is always re-evaluating her parenting and adjusting as needed.  It's been such a blessing to parent and have a mom friend to vent to or ask questions.  And bonus, she's my sister, so she's not going anywhere when I accidentally share too much information about my mistakes.  (I have boundary issues sometimes, perhaps I shouldn't be allowed to blog, I'm still surprised Doug hasn't tried to reign me in yet).  Point being, she's amazing, a great wife, mother, sister, friend, and all around human being.  If you aren't friends with her, you should be!  And she's an amazing writer, now everyone should go harass her and tell her to start blogging. She's funny too!  They have one adopted daughter and 2 foster kids at the moment. She homeschools all 3 and takes their daughter to various appointments and has had to deal with a lot of crazy-you-just-wouldn't-believe-it type of stuff. And she's done it gracefully!  I love her and I am so proud of her every. single. day.  

Okay, my memory issues are quite concerning. My sister mailed us this package that we received over a month ago.  I opened it as soon as we got it, but saw it had a ton of small pieces and decided to wait to look at it until the kids were otherwise occupied or sleeping.  Somehow it fell behind our bed and I forgot about it until my sister asked if we ever got it.  Luckily I remembered where I had misplaced it and we were able to enjoy it's educational goodness today.

She doesn't look sick, but my piles of now clean laundry would beg to differ.

My sister printed and made all these goodies using the "confessionsofahomeschoolmom" blog.  I'm so impressed and feel that much worse about neglecting this awesomeness for so long.  If I were her I'd have my undies in a wad over this and refuse to send any more packages.  She's a better person than me...I hope.  At least she acted very friendly and mature about it on Voxer.  And, this is me officially begging to keep them coming!

Kees approves.

I sorted and bagged, cause that's what I do.

Right before lunch, I asked Doug to hold Kora while I made lunch.  She had been clingy and I knew she wouldn't want to be put down. Doug noticed she had a fever, so he gave her some medicine and helped her fall asleep.  She slept quite a while and hasn't puked since this morning.  Hoping we don't have any more of that.  Poor girl.  And poor me, well maybe I should say poor washing machine. It got run ragged today.  We had to change sheets many times and used about 15 towels.

Rainy Season decided to give my clothes an extra rinse.  I had to run out in the middle of lunch to move these clothes, then when it stopped raining I put them back out.

So much laundry!

Yep, I did all these dishes while listening to a nice long message from my sister.  I love Voxer and her!

After lunch, I told Kees we should go pick a book to read.  I may have gotten distracted and we did this....

In typical flightiness, I was easily distracted when I noticed the shaving cream on the counter.

I made a car, Kees had me add a siren to make it a police car.

We don't use shaving cream to shave, because I'm cheap.  A family that was leaving Thailand gave us this shaving cream and I decided we could use it to play with.  It was so fun, I looked at the store to see if I might want to purchase some.  Guess what, I'm still cheap.

Gotta get that study time in somehow.  I practiced all my Thai letters about 3 times. Once Kees was very engaged in this activity, I slipped away, washed my hands an practiced writing in a notebook. After about 15 minutes he noticed I wasn't "playing" anymore, so then I switched back to doing this.

Everything we do must include cars.

45 minutes of shaving cream, Kees remembered we were going to read and said he was ready. I said, let's clean up first, so he did this for 30 minutes!  Our own sensory station!

Finally our book! This book has several stories. They are listed on the edges of the cover with pictures and Kees and I like to make a beeping sound as we go over the choices and then a ding ding ding ding ding, when we make our selection.

We were reading an active story and Kees was acting everything out.  Kora liked that!

After dinner, Kees and I made lemonade from those cheap lemons we bought yesterday. And we made tortillas.  Kees makes work so much more fun.  He used a blue towel as a pretend tortilla. He told me it was going to be so sweet cause he added a lot of sugar and candy. The towel has stripes, and he told me the yellow was lemon flavored and the green was sour.

Kees was so upset he couldn't squeeze any juice out of this lemon.

I finished squeezing the lemons, then we made simple syrup. We lost his stool and had to use an upside down laundry basket.  He kept moving it over until he could see.  Then I had the genius idea of just letting him sit on the counter.

Lemon juice being added to simple syrup to make lemonade concentrate.  The concentrate is 1 part sugar, 1 part water, and 1 part lemon juice. Then you add 3-4 more parts of water to make the lemonade. 

A while back I had leftover strawberries and made strawberry syrup.  But I forgot all about it.  I was considering adding it to the lemonade concentrate, but I wasn't sure if it would still be good. So, Kees and I smelled it.  It smelled fine. So we decided to taste it. It tasted fine too, but it was brown instead of red...fishy if you ask me. I opted to leave it out.  Kees wanted to know why I wasn't going to use it, so I explained it was the wrong color.  He decided he'd stir it all up and see if it would turn back red.  It didn't, but it was worth trying! ;)

I love problem solving.  This crisco would not come out, so we used a long poker stick, but then Kees figured out the dough hook worked better.

Rolling tortillas.

This is Kees's tortilla!  I'm gonna have to buy another roller so he can work alongside me, I had to fanagle a plan so I could use this when I needed it.  Kees ended up standing by the tortilla that was cooking and I would run back and roll out a new one.  When the cooking one bubbled up, he'd call me back to flip it.

My tortillas are never pretty, but they sure are yummy!  If you want the recipe, I've included the link here. And P.S. I use Crisco instead of lard, I'm sure you could use butter if you aren't into processed junk like crisco.

Okay, here is my helpful parenting tip for a picky eater. It may not work for you, but gosh darn it, it worked for us today and I feel like a rock star.  As most of you know, if you read this blog, Kees is a picky eater.  I know a few things from my early childhood days at OU, and I *try* to apply that to parenting. But let's face it, whatever your expertise may be in, you become a complete idiot when it comes to your own kids.  I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way, cause that would be embarrassing.  Anyway, one of the main things I gleaned from my studies and mentors was about how to offer your kids choices.  And we do A LOT of that.  Here's the thing, offering choices doesn't mean your kid gets to be the boss.  It means he/she has a little bit of say in his/her own life and it shows him/her that they are valued.  You can argue the point if you'd like, this is just my opinion and it's not completely uninformed. ;)

So, it has taken me quite some time to figure out how to apply this to Kees and the eating issues we face.  And here's what is working for the moment.  He has to eat.  That's non-negotiable.  He has to eat what we want him to eat, some in my field will most definitely disagree with this, but that's where we stand...for now.  So, for a while now, I've been sitting with Kees and he has to have 4 bites of any of the foods he dislikes, because he's 4 years old and it's not gonna kill him. Unless he's allergic, in which case I would obviously not make him continue to eat it. :) 

This works moderately well.  But today, I counted out all of his bites, his plate had exactly what I wanted him to eat on it.  There were plenty of things I knew he liked, but he's not a fan of zucchini and pumpkin. So, we took turns choosing his bites.  He got to choose three bites in a row, then I would choose one.  I obviously chose zucchini and pumpkin every time.  But he ate and we had fun doing it.  We talked and enjoyed our time together...Doug was dealing with a sick baby girl, so it was quality time for me and Kees.  My favorite moment was when he wanted me to guess what he was going to choose.  He'd been choosing grapes and scarfing them down.  I guessed three other things, then finally said grapes.  His face lit up and he asked in a surprised tone, "How did you know???"  I was tempted to lie and tell him that I have magical mommy powers, but I didn't, I just said, "Well you've been choosing that a lot, so I thought you might choose it again."  So my new mommy motto, that goes along with the whole "choose your battles" mantra, is this: "You've got to decide in a given situation what is negotiable and what is non-negotiable. Some aspect of every situation should have an element of negotiability to it. Use that aspect to achieve your non-negotiable goal."

He used this scratcher to help him pry the grapes from the vine.

Our meal was weird and yellow, that's what happens when I shop and buy all the cheap and/or new/rare items at royal project. :)

Here are some examples for those who need things a bit more concrete.

1.  Your child must be dressed for school at X time. That's non-negotiable.  But they can choose (from limited pre-selected options) what they will wear and possibly if they want to get dressed before or after they brush their teeth.

2. Your child must share with their sibling. That's non-negotiable. But they can choose which part of the set gets shared, or they can choose to give their sibling a turn right away (if there's only one toy), or in five minutes.

I could think of a ton more scenarios, but they all start sounding similar in my head.  It's a fairly simple method and I'd say 90% of the time it works well, but when it doesn't, the next step is a simple warning of the consequence if they don't make a good choice within the parameters offered, and then you follow through.

Okay, so I'm obviously not winning any parenting awards, but I thought this trick might work for someone else and it led into the cute story about Kees, so obviously it was note worthy. Again, this blog is in no way intended to provide advice or make it seem like I have it all together because obviously, I don't.  I sent my mom and sister birthday gifts months ago, forgot and got them more stuff.  Yeah, I'm the epitome of with-it-ness.  I mainly use this blog to work through things I'm learning and as a reminder to myself.  I may look back and read this and laugh at how wrong I was, but that's part of the joy of it all.  I'm imperfect. I'm learning every day.

If you've got suggestions, I'd love to hear them!  I've still got lots to learn. ;)